Senate ends debate, votes on bill today
The bill, drafted by an all-party parliamentary committee, seems certain to be passed by more than the required two-thirds majority of the 100-seat upper house so it could go to President Asif Ali Zardari for his signature possibly later this week to mark the restoration of a genuine parliamentary democracy in the country.
All 292 members of the 342-seat National Assembly who were present voted for the bill on April 8, despite opposition of some to some clauses, particularly one renaming the NWFP as Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
“We expect that despite party positions — although national interest should be supreme — the Senate will pass the bill with the same spirit with which it was passed in the National Assembly,” leader of the house Nayyar Hussain Bokhari said while winding up the debate.
Violent protests in parts of the Hazara division against the renaming of NWFP and an apparent change of stance by the opposition PML-Q overshadowed the three-day Senate debate, in which Chairman Faooq H. Naek said more than 60 members took part after head of the parliamentary committee and prime minister’s adviser Mian Raza Rabbani introduced the bill on Monday.
But there was wide support for the consensus bill containing the most important amendments to the Constitution since the adoption of the original document in 1973, as well as for the NWFP’s new name given it to reflect the cultural identity of its majority Pakhtun population but which is unpopular in non-Pakhtun, Hindko-speaking population of the Hazara division.
Mr Bokhari, who represents Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani in the Senate, noted that the present bill had come when Pakistan had an elected president who did not interfere with the parliamentary committee or parliament while the previous major Eighth and Seventeenth amendments were made under duress to distort the Constitution as desired by then military rulers.
“The Eighteenth Amendment has thrown out that dirt and now you have a clean constitution …,” he said about the bill which also aims to enhance provincial autonomy, repeal the 17th Amendment of 2003 that legitimised the decrees of then military president Pervez Musharraf, and provide for a parliamentary oversight of the appointment of judges of the superior courts.
The clause-by-clause voting on the bill, when members must rise in their seats to be counted, is to commence immediately after the Senate meets on Thursday at 10am to be followed by the final vote on the bill as a whole by division when members proceed to two different lounges to register their preferences in writing.
Each clause as well as the bill as a whole must be passed by not less than 67 senators, or two-thirds majority of the total house membership of 100 comprising PPP’s 27 seats, PML-Q’s 21, 11 independents, JUI’s 10, PML-N’s seven, six each of ANP and MQM, Jamaat-i-Islami’s three, Balochistan National Party-A’s three, National Party’s two and one each of PML-F, PPP-S and JWP.
Amendment to the bill submitted by several opposition senators — including some seeking to retain the present NWFP name or change it to “Sarhad” instead of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, and carve out new Bahawalpur, and “South Punjab” or “Seraiki” provinces from Punjab — can be moved during the clause-by-clause reading by a simple majority of voice vote.
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